


Crowned With Lilies They Go

by Cerusee



Series: #BatfamContentWar [3]
Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: #batfamcontentwar, Death, Drug Use, Gen, angst angst angst, something adjacent to body horror maybe?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-12
Updated: 2017-09-12
Packaged: 2018-12-27 07:26:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12076347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerusee/pseuds/Cerusee
Summary: Since Mom was sleeping in the bed for once, not on the couch, there was room for him next to her. Jason crawled in against her, cuddling up against her warmth, and making a soft happy sound as he pressed against her softness, forgetting about the bills for now. “Night, Mom,” he whispered.“Baby,” Catherine sighed in her sleep, and she put her arms around him and hugged him, held him tight.





	Crowned With Lilies They Go

“Hey, baby,” Catherine said, with a slow smile, as her son opened the door.

“Hey Mom,” Jason said, closing the door behind him, plastic bags dangling from his hand. He smiled sweetly back at her. “I got us dinner.”

“Yeah, baby?” Catherine stretched on the couch. “Good for you, what you got?”

“Mac and cheese,” Jason said.

“Baby, we don’t have milk.”

“Nah, Mrs. Sirko gave me some milk. She put some butter in it!” Jason held up a glass jar and swirled it, full of white liquid. There was a tiny yellow pat of butter circling the inside of the jar as Jason shook it. 

Catherine leaned her head against the pillow. “She’s so good to us. You said thanks, right?”

“Yeah, Mom.” Jason wrinkled his nose, like he thought it was funny she even had to ask. “‘Course I did.” 

He was such a good kid. Better than she deserved. She was so lucky to have him. 

Catherine thanked God every day of her life for Jason. He was Heaven’s blessing on her. She wasn’t meant to have kids, but Bill had given her one anyway. She’d taken his baby into her arms and loved him with all her heart, and she still wasn’t sorry, even though Bill was gone, and now they lived like this. Jason was so good to her.

The apartment was small and close, so that even from the couch, Catherine could hear every step Jason took in the kitchen. She heard the _click whoosh_ when he turned on the one working burner on the stove.

“Be careful, baby!” Catherine said. She pushed herself off the arm of the couch, wanting to supervise him, make sure he didn’t burn himself, or splash himself with boiling water. But the grey-stained carpet looked a long way away from the seat of the couch. She tried to take a deep breath, but her lungs betrayed her, and she bent over, coughing. And coughing. And coughing. She spat blood out onto her bare legs.

Jason came running out of the kitchen. “Mom!” he said, trying to ease her back onto the couch arm. “Lie down, okay? Come on. Just lie down.” He grabbed a tissue and scrubbed the blood off her legs before he replaced the blanket she’d kicked off. She stroked his head, before he went back to the kitchen to finish dinner.

He was so smart, her Jason. He knew how to wash stains out, and how to stop them from happening. Even blood.

***

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Todd,” the doctor had told her. He looked like a teenager to her eyes, nervous and worried. She wasn’t so old herself, she was just thirty-five, but she felt a million years older than the kid front of her. “What we’re looking at is, well. I’m very sorry, Mrs. Todd, it’s cancer, and it’s advanced.”

“What sort of cancer?” Catherine had asked. It didn’t matter; she knew without him saying so that she wasn’t going to get better. But she was curious.

“It’s ovarian cancer, Mrs. Todd. Your ovaries are—”

Catherine laughed, bitterly. “They’ve been conspiring against me,” she said. “They’ve never been my friends.”

***

“Here you go,” Jason said, pressing a bowl of macaroni and cheese into her hands. “Eat up.”

Catherine leaned back into the comfortable angle where the couch arm met its back, and lifted a forkful to her mouth. She got three, four mouthfuls in before nausea forced her to set it aside.

“Mom. Please. Try?” Jason said. 

She knew it hurt him when she couldn’t eat. She _wanted_ to eat. She could remember when food was something she liked, and eating wasn’t just a mechanical action she had to keep repeating to put up a buffer against the death she could feel breathing against her neck.

She could remember, but _then_ wasn’t _now_. She sat up, hunching over, struggling not to vomit, and out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jason’s bowl of pasta, untouched. He wouldn’t eat until she did, she knew. He’d been like that ever since the cancer came. She wanted to tell him not to bother. 

She knew perfectly well she was dying.

She stood up, staggering on weak legs, and made it to to the toilet before she emptied the contents of her stomach. Not much besides a tiny bit of undigested macaroni.

Jason was behind her, holding her hair back in his hands while she vomited.

“Baby...I gotta,” she told him. “I’m sorry. I gotta.”

“Okay,” he whispered. He was crying, and she pulled him against her, wrapping her arms around him, keeping her vomit-scented mouth away from his face, trying to apologize in advance for her sickness and her failure with sheer love.

***

Catherine always did the prep herself. She was weak, she was so weak. She’d made her baby boy go out and buy for her, and she hated herself for every moment of it. But when the pain came back, and the shakes came back, so bad she couldn’t move, when she just _had_ to, and she was practically curling around the need for the stuff, she sent Jason across the hall to sleep. Or at least out of the apartment, while she shot up. No matter how shaky her hands were, she did the spoon, the lighter, the needle all by herself, and she’d never once let him see it. 

She hadn’t run out of veins yet. Not yet.

She loaded the spoon. She flicked the lighter. She watched the contents of the bowl of the spoon bubble.

***

Jason sat outside their door, hands in his lap, waiting, counting off the minutes until he was allowed back inside.

He knocked on the door. Catherine made an affirmative sound, and Jason stood and went inside.

“Mom?”

“Hey sweetheart,” Catherine said. She was off of the couch for the first time in ages, on her feet, even if she was swaying slightly. “I want to sleep in the bed tonight.” She was smiling at him, and it made him feel warm, even knowing that she was high.

“Ok, Mom,” Jason said, and he was so happy. He wished he wasn’t this happy every time she got high. 

Things were always good for a few hours, when Mom was good. She mostly slept, but sometimes she cooked, and they had such great leftovers for a week. Sometimes he could trade the last of Mom’s rice and beans across the hall for Mrs. Sirko’s Efficient Sausage. (That’s what she called it. It was efficient because she went to the butcher and asked for the scraps. Jason loved it. It tasted good, and it cost pennies. He could pick pennies up on the sidewalk, and out of fountains, and Mrs. Sirko took them, and anything else he could offer her, with a tilt to her head, and gave him the sausages. “The little ones,” she’d say, her face so kind and crinkly. “Be kind.”)

Jason took Catherine by the hand and led her into the apartment’s one closet-sized bedroom, and onto the bed mostly only he’d slept on for at least the last year. The mattress was a full; Jason thought maybe it was leftover from when Dad was still around. He helped her lay down on her side and pulled the heaps of blankets up over her shoulders. “Night, Mom,” he said, kissing her on the forehead. She nodded off right in front of him, just like a baby.

She looked so peaceful. She always did, after she used.

Jason went back into the kitchen and sat at the table, looking at the pile of bills. Power so past due it was already off. It had been off since October; the apartment was cold enough that they both had to wear pants and sweaters and blankets on top of blankets, all of the time. Water, that was gonna be off soon. Gas, off in a few days, so no more stove after that. They were overdue on the rent by at _least_ a month. The landlord had already come pounding on the door for it, but Mom had been passed out then, and Jason just sat, quietly, until he went away. But he'd be back soon enough.

Jason had been going out and swiping canned tuna and ramen cups from the local bodega whenever he could. Slipping boxes of Kraft into the pockets of his hoodie, or a bottle of orange juice under his arm. But the owners had started watching him with a close eye when he went in, so he didn’t think he could do it much longer.

They had twenty-six dollars right now. Jason had stolen all of them. It wasn’t enough for rent, or power, or gas, or water, so Jason was already mentally splitting the money between food and smack.

He was so tired.

Since Mom was sleeping in the bed for once, not on the couch, there was room for him next to her. Jason crawled in against her, cuddling up against her warmth, and making a soft happy sound as he pressed against her softness, forgetting about the bills for now. “Night, Mom,” he whispered.

“Baby,” Catherine sighed in her sleep, and she put her arms around him and hugged him, held him tight.

***

It was the cold that woke him up, after the light had come back and the room was bright with it. It was so cold that he could see his own breath puffing out in soft white clouds above the blankets.

Jason was shivering, even though Catherine was still hugging him.

He was shivering because Catherine was cold, too. 

Jason slowly realized that he couldn’t see her breath in the cold air, and she wasn’t soft anymore. She was stiff and still and hard beside him, her lifeless arms still clutching him tightly.

“Mom,” Jason said quietly. “Let go.”

“Mom, let go of me.” He tried to shove himself out of her grasp, but her rigid body had a strength in death that it had lacked in life. He whined. “ _Mommm_. Please, Mom? Please, let go. _Please!_ ” 

But Catherine couldn’t hear him anymore.

His own breath came faster and faster, so frantic and unstoppable that he started to feel lightheaded, while he struggled, fruitlessly. His vision started to grey out.

 _What if I’m trapped here forever?_

The thought made him want to flail wildly, but he was too constricted to move much. And then he thought also, _but what if I hurt her?_ , and that made him stop moving altogether, still wrapped in her cold arms.

Jason started to cry.

He cried and cried. He had no idea how long he cried. He cried until his face dripped with tears and snot, but Catherine didn’t wake up, no matter how hard he sobbed, and her stiff arms, wrapped so tight around him, never loosened even an inch.

***

Jason braced his wrists, and _pushed_ , as hard as he could, against Catherine’s shoulders. That got him as far as her ribcage. Jason took a deep breath, and shoved again, against her ribs, and that got him past her rigidly crossed arms.

Free. Finally. He could breathe properly again, so he did, over and over.

He sat next to her on the bed for a while, watching over her as if he thought she might still open her eyes at any moment. As if she might sit up, and say to him, _Good morning, baby. What should we have for breakfast today?_

Eventually, he stumbled onto the floor, and then to his feet, and dug in the closet for an old knapsack.

 _Food_ , Jason thought. 

_Clothes. Money._ And, _water_. The city didn’t always have water. Not here, not where he was going to be.

They had....the remains of the macaroni and cheese. Unrefrigerated, already old, but Jason just shoveled it down, and left the pot in the sink, licking the spoon he’d used to stir it, and then the pot, for good measure. They had a box of Pop-Tarts, which he’d found miraculously whole in someone’s garbage can. He put them into the knapsack. A couple of ancient granola bars from the back of a drawer. He took those, too. He couldn’t find any more food, so after that he looked for anything that could hold water, and filled it it, and stuffed it into the knapsack.

He scoured the apartment for loose cash. They had twenty-seven dollars and seventy-nine cents total. He put ten bucks in the knapsack, eight in his pocket, and stuffed the rest into his underwear, in case he got rolled. He was probably gonna get rolled.

He put on as many layers as he could manage—shirt and pants, two sweaters, a hoodie, the winter coat from Goodwill that was practically new, those ratty old mittens and his hat and scarf.

***

He wanted to make her more dignified, but she was still stiff. 

At least her eyes were closed. Jason knelt down next to Catherine. “I love you, Mom,” he said, and he kissed her forehead one last time. He kicked the blankets into the corner, and draped the bedsheet over her from head to foot, the way they did in the movies.

On the street, he used the change for a pay phone, to call 911.

_“This is 911, what’s your emergency?”_

“855 South Street, unit 46. There’s a dead woman.” Jason hung up before the operator could ask for any details.

He just didn’t want her to have to rot before someone noticed her, like they had for poor Mr. Mendez two floors below, last year. He sure wasn’t going to stick around for the cops. He’d heard stories, stories from other kids, stories about Gotham’s foster system. Stories about GCPD cops whose eyes lit up when they knew you were all alone. Jason had quietly decided, long ago, that he'd rather take his chances on the streets.

Jason stepped out of the phone booth. He looked up at the apartment they used to share.

And then he set off down the street, and he didn’t look back.


End file.
